As a format, VHS is dead, but as a horror movie franchise, V/H/S is doing very well. For the third year in a row, we’re getting one of these found-footage anthologies, with another new crop of filmmakers. And it looks every bit as nutty, creepy, gross, and bizarre as the earlier installments did. Check out the new V/H/S: Viral red-band (i.e., NSFW) trailer after the jump.

The second film in the V/H/S series really upped the ante with energy and pure visceral insanity, and now you can get your first taste of the third movie. V/H/S: VIRAL features segments from directors Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes, Extraterrestrial), Marcel Sarmiento (ABCs of Death segment “D is for Dogfight”), Gregg Bishop (The Birds of Anger), Justin Benson (Wrecked) and Todd Lincoln (The Apparition).

This first international trailer recaps the series, and then launches into a prolonged blast of horror images from the new movie. You won’t know anything about story here — there’s barely even a sense of the framing segments — but there’s a lot that will make horror fans want to see the film. (And the official synopsis, which we’ve included after the break, does have story info.) Check out the V/H/S: VIRAL international trailer below. Read More »

The ABCs of Death is an anthology comprised of twenty-six vile, disgusting, hilarious, sometimes fantastic, and other times forgettable horror shorts. Individual directors each paired a letter of the alphabet with a way someone can die, and every possible option was on the table, no matter how offensive or gory.

Predictably, the results are equal to the imaginations and skills of each director. Some episodes look gorgeous with innovative, shocking and exciting ideas executed beautifully. Others are simple and clean, and work just right. Then there are films that don’t do much with their concept and lay there. Along the way, the constant excitement and anticipation of which filmmaker is next and what their death might be provides a worthy propulsive energy in the absence of a narrative. But when one of the films lays an egg, it hurts everyone else around it.

The ABC’s of Death hits VOD January 31 and theaters March 8, but it just screened at the AFI Fest Presented by Audi. Read more after the jump. Read More »

The horror anthology The ABCs of Death, inspired in part by early kids’ books and bearing a real resemblance to Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, is a who’s-who of current horror and genre stars and up and comers. The film will be divided into twenty-six segments in which a letter of the alphabet corresponds to a method of death. The segments will be short, but given that they’ll be directed by people like Nacho Vigalondo, Jason Eisener, Noburo Iguchi and many more, they might pack a punch.

Two more directors were added to the list today, bringing the total number of signees to twenty-five. Xavier Gens (Frontier(s), Hitman) and Christopher Smith (Severance, Triangle, Black Death) are now on the roster. Details of a contest to choose the final director are after the break. Read More »

The horror anthology is really coming back, and if things work out well Drafthouse Films, with Timpson Films and Magnet, might be right at the forefront of the mini-trend with a new project called The ABCs of Death. This is a massive anthology inspired by kids ABC books, in which twenty-five directors and one contest winner will each “be assigned a letter from the alphabet that represents a word to act as a springboard for a short. It will be up to each filmmaker to interpret, from accidental deaths to murders committed in cold blood.”

In other words, this might be a bit like Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. But with directors like Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police) and Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film) making the shorts, it could get a lot crazier than that. The full director list and a cute teaser poster is after the break. Read More »

Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel‘s Deadgirl is already available on DVD in the UK but still awaiting cinema release in the US. Ahead of its bow in ‘limited engagement’ from July 24, Bloody Disgusting have received a top quality bootleg leak of the trailer which you can see below the break. If you want to catch the picture in cinemas, there’s a list of it’s currently scheduled engagements also at the site.

The film is essentially a zombie picture, as the trailer will reveal. Not the typical zombie picture, mind. It revolves around two young men who find a woman chained up in an abandoned asylum and, upon discovering that she’s undead, wonder just how they might enjoy (read: exploit) her.

Deadgirl tells the story who two friends, Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan), who skip High School and break into a local abandoned mental hospital. In the boiler room they find a dead woman strapped to a gurney and covered in plastic. But it turns out that the dead girl is alive, and JT wants to turn the naked zombie into their personal sex slave. Rickie wants no part of it, and tries to distince himself from the situation. But when word of the discovery begins to spread, he gets pulled back in.

Perverse and just plain fucked up, Deadgirl is the next evolution of sex-infused horror genre, which regained traction a couple years ago with the Sundance hit Teeth. For example, at one point, when the dead girl’s body begins to dry up, its insinuated that they begin to have sex with the warm gooey wounds in her stomach. About 15-20% off the press in attendance at my screening walked out of the screening before the climax.

But don’t get me wrong, Deadgirl is steps above the typical torture porn horror film. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel have an incredible attention of mood and tone. Deadgirl floats smoothly between dark comedy and horror, and the result is a coming-of-age film like you’ve never seen before (or will likely ever see again).